Machinery Directive and CE marking

FWIW

As someone who was actively involved as a UK representative on EU standards committees and UK expert on various working groups in the EU before retirement I can confirm that Andrew is correct.

As far as EU Directives are concerned, they are not aimed at individuals or even manufacturers. They direct national governments to enact certain legislation. Thus you have to refer to and conform to the UK legislation.

It is illegal to CE mark anything that does not require it.

Russell

[This posting has been removed]

I suddenly realised that this thread was just like being back at work where disentangling this sort of stuff was a painful necessity. Arguing about the meanings of legal documents can be interesting and I was in danger of being sucked in! Then I remembered, at work, I had a telephone, access to specialists and legal eagles, and a consultancy budget. Not at home I don't!

One thing I learned about the law is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Decoding regulations isn't always straightforward without first understanding their structure, terminology and background. They are written by lawyers for lawyers, not blokes on the internet.

Dipping into fragments of law is quite dangerous unless you understand the scope as set internally by a particular Regulation and also by other applicable Acts, Regulations and Guidelines. There is also a hierarchy in law, for example a conviction can be overturned by the Supreme Court and also an expectation in UK Law that meanings will be tested in court. The resulting Case Law can and does alter the meaning of Regulations. Through casual reading, it's quite easy to convince yourself that illegal acts are OK, or that legal acts are forbidden.

Not least because they helped write it, the meaning of the Machinery Directive was clear to governments who converted into national legislation. The UK regulation is also clear to commercial organisations. It's meaning only becomes blurred in the context of private workshops, which it was never intended to cover. For legal reasons, Regulations rarely spell out all possible exceptions in comfortable black and white form. Sometimes Guidelines are issued to clarify the point, and there is one! Home workshops do not apply CE Marks!

But, CE Marking apart, we are all required to obey the law. Robert mentioned EMC, and I wish Model Engineers took this more seriously. However, the legal position is that interfering with a legally defined essential service will result in enforcement action. A chap innocently operating a power tool without a filter will probably just be told to fit one. More deliberate or negligent interference can be punished with confiscation, heavy fines, or even a prison sentence. The nature of home workshops is that they are unlikely to interfere with an essential service, hence few are prosecuted. Best practice is to fit filters please.

So there you go, 10000 words from me, agreeing with Michael that I don't want to get involved! 

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 06/04/2019 11:14:41

At least I am FAR enough away to be able stand on the side and say..

The arguments here seem so much like those of BREXIT....posturing and posing instead of real useful discourse that can aid the poor chap in his workshop being seemingly threatened by the ominosity of this thread...Why aren't you all making swarf instead..

Joe

+1, well said Joe.

Robert,

I am being obtuse (again?). If I am being obtuse then you are being acute. Dave (SOD) summed up the underlying theme of my posts very well I think. Regulation is not fully prescriptive and where it isn't has to be interpreted considering the intent and as he rightly says this is normally achieved by 'case law'.

The example you state of exceeding a limit is irrelevant to the discussion as that is prescriptive. Legislation lays down a limit, limit exceeded, clearly non compliant, job done.

However clearly from your original question the application of the legislation in this case is not prescriptive and therefore must be interpreted. If it were prescriptive and there was a clause stating this legislation is all encompassing and applicable to commercial, non commercial and any use then you would have quoted it rather than ask an (obtuse) open question.

You have been provided with several specific examples of legislation clauses and been given opinion of their interpretation which apparently go no where close to satisfying your opinion and your opinion clearly is not open to being swayed. In fact I doubt that if the president of the EU posted here the intent of the regulation is not aimed at model engineers you would still argue the point.

So let's reverse the burden of proof and have you quote the specific clauses that you interpret as showing why a model engineer in his shed producing an item of tooling for his own use in his own shed with no intent to place it on the market or put it into use without commercial gain MUST CE mark it and Must comply with the Machinery Directive.

If you can do that in the black and white terms of your aviation compliance example like a go or no go gauge I may entertain further debate. Otherwise I have better things to do.

Paul.

Irrespective of what the legislation says or doesn't say, does anyone really think that the powers that be have the inclination, knowledge, time or manpower to report and investigate every individual that might, or might not, have transgressed? Certainly not, in the UK at least.

Andrew

My brother manufactures aircraft covers and associated ground equipment. www.cambraicovers.com

The type of equipment requiring CE marking is equipment which contains electrical or mechanical components which have to comply to standards, or have possible safety or environmental. implications .

this from https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/product/ce-mark/index_en.htm

1. Identify the EU requirements for your product

The EU-wide requirements are laid down in directives that cover different products or product sectors, for example:

• Toys
• Electrical equipment
• Machinery
• Medical devices
• Lifts
• Personal Protective Equipment

These directives lay down the essential requirements that products have to fulfil.

I don't know where you get the "put into use" statement from, I can find no reference to it anywhere in the current CE legislation. Are you referring to equipment being put into use after purchase? As I said before purchase is the operative, if you offer for purchase an new item which is covered by CE requirements, in the EEA, it must carry a CE mark, but the onus to assure compliance is on the manufacturer, not on external independant testing, as it used to be in the UK with BSI etc. CE most certainly does not apply to things you make yourself, and then later may offer for sale as a one off used item, be it a model, a mechanism you have built, or a piece of used workshop machinery. Do you really imagine that the vast amount of used engineering and other equipment offered for sale on ebay for instance is all CE approved?

I am getting rather tired of all this willy waving

Thats good..............coming from a bloke called .....ROD

My Grandfather believed in keeping your head down and hope that ‘Officialdom’ would not notice you!

My own experience over the decades suggests that he had the right idea!

I haven’t got a lathe or a mill or a workshop, just a shed and I just go there to read the paper

Mike

My genuine Moore and Wright digital calipers have the lower marking.

Yes likewise..

Posted by Mike Poole on 06/04/2019 21:02:34:

...

I haven’t got a lathe or a mill or a workshop, just a shed and I just go there to read the paper

Mike

Well I sure hope you are disposing of those highly flammable newspapers in an appropriate manner in the correctly coloured recycling bin and not allowing them to build up into dangerous piles of firehazard material. If they catch fire and burn your neighbour's mansion down, fry his children alive and destroy his Rolls Royce collection, not only will your insurance refuse to pay up any you will be personally sued for millions, but you will be clapped in irons and sent to the colonies to hung drawn and quartered at HM's pleasure.

There's nothing more dangerous than a newspaper.

Again For What It's Worth: the CE Marking Association and the EU both say there is no such thing as a 'China Export' trademark. Anyone who believe the lower mark means 'China Export' is misled, it appears to be an urban myth.

Investigation of the 'China Export' mark showed that examples were either mis-drawn genuine CE marks as in Neil's example, or outright forgeries. No one recognises 'China Export' as a real mark.

My opinion is that CE marks are no different from any other brand-name or trade-mark. They are all unstable, and all liable to be forged, misapplied and misunderstood. The British Standard Kite-mark was abused here and abroad long before China came on the scene.

It's never safe to buy only on the basis that something carries a mark, or not. Consider the seller: a CE marked washing machine bought from Curry's is unlikely to be a fake; but an ultra-cheep bedside lamp from Bangood could well be a wrong'un. What a surprise!

Europeans have been careful for millennia not to 'buy a pig in a poke', 'die Katze im Sack kaufen' or 'vendre le meche'. It was good advice during the Dark Ages and it's good advice today.

Dave

Apart from a politician...

SOD, Again For What It's Worth: the CE Marking Association and the EU both say there is no such thing as a 'China Export' trademark. Anyone who believe the lower mark means 'China Export' is misled, it appears to be an urban myth.

Well they would say that wouldnt they. The Chinese Export tale is just an excuse to dump goods on the European market which appear to carry a genuine CE mark, but are actually untraceable back to an original manufacturer, and have no paperwork compliance assurance available. realistically, you can only prosecute a manufacturer for non compliance if you know who and where he is! When was it first noticed that the accuracy checked paperwork included with Chinese machine tools was A) all identical, and B) bore no relevance whatever to the machine it was packed with? "When sleeping dragon wakes, whole world will tremble" may refer more to aggresive commercial techniques rather than outright aggression.

We may be splitting hairs, Phil, but the Chinese are not guilty of inventing a 'China Export' mark for the purpose of misleading Europeans. Some Chinese makers, not all, are guilty of faking CE marks and documentation. In this they are not alone: I cannot think of any country that hasn't had a proportion of dishonest trading. In terms of value, British PPI mis-selling dwarfs naughty CE marks. I don't know how you go about buying stuff, but most of the CE marked stuff in my house appears to be genuine. How many examples of fake CE marks can you find in your home? (I'd expect you to find several, all of them on cheap tat, unless you've been very unlucky. I'll be surprised if you can find a major item bought in the UK that's a dud.)

I'm certain that some Chinese tools have been delivered in the past with bad documentation, and that it still happens. But I can confirm that the 'certificates' that came with my Warco Lathe and Mill both claimed numbers I was able to confirm by measurement. (To be pedantic I found the lathe's chuck run out to be slightly better than the certificate claimed.) But this proves nothing about the documentation provided with Chinese machines in general!

Chinese manufacturing is typical of the industrial development everywhere. Germany and Birmingham were once both notorious for cheap rubbish and false claims, but it's a phase that doesn't last. It allows people to make a start, but it's not sustainable - there are better ways of making money. China's economy is 'growing up' and tat will be soon be made somewhere else.

Although Chinese industrial activity and dodgy CE marks don't worry me much, their policy in other spheres does. Spratly Islands is but one example; I won't say more, it's politics.

Dave